Category: Conventional

Crops are Waking Up

While spring is not technically here yet, you should take a look around and you could have fooled me.  Buds on the filbert (hazelnut) trees are coming to life.


  
The swiss chard is started to perk up after winter and head for the sky.  These plants will get up to 7 feet tall by the time we harvest!


And the inevitable battle with the mud has started.  Matt had a little trouble while out spraying, so he called in the big guns to come pull him out (yeah I mean me!).


 Happy farming and happy Friday!!

Business & Pleasure, A Trip South of the Border

I love when my hobbies in life can collide.  At the start of this month I was able to combine my love for traveling with my love for agriculture.  My husband and I took off for Mexico for a short getaway, a short conference, and a whole lot of sun!

 Bayer Crop Science has been a company that I have always been impressed with, but not more than in the past few years.  As a chemical company it might seem easy to stick their heads in the sand and just do what they have always done, which is provide safe and effective products for farmers all over the world, Bayer however is looking around at world wide agriculture and seeing that there are conversations that need to start happening.  Their commitment to agriculture goes beyond just the farmer, they work for the bees, the crops, and the soil.  Their slogan of “Science for a Better Life” is being played out right now at the forefront of their efforts.

 So on our little getaway we attended Bayer’s Horticulture Symposium.  Attended mostly by industry folks and farmers from all the Americas.  Along with Matt and I, Marie Bowers Stagg (OregonGreen Blogger) and her husband Tristan also attended to represent the Pacific Northwest.  It was interesting being at a conference where we had to listen through the voice of a translator for most of the presentations, but more interesting was that the challenges that people are facing all over the world are challenges that I am facing on my farm in Oregon.  The life of a farmer isn’t easy, pests find your crop no matter what, and learning new and innovative ways to take care of that pest is something that all farmers are looking for.  Another issue that was talked about at length was the challenge with finding good consistent sources of labor, a problem that has prompted more creativeness when it comes to robotics and machinery.

It wasn’t all about our problems out on the farm though.  We heard presentations about what customers around the world are looking for.  They like quality shown to them in certifications and standards, traceability, sustainability, and social responsibility.  So finding ways to balance all of that while at the same time encouraging the next generation of farmers, improving people’s lives and livelihoods, and taking care of the environment will be an ongoing conversation for as long as I’m farming I am sure.  It is encouraging though to see that these are real conversations that people are having on so many levels, from the dirt up you could say.

We were also fortunate enough to head out into Mexico for some farm touring.  We met a jack fruit farmer and a mango farmer.  Jack fruit is a large (watermelon sized) fruit that is grown in trees.  You won’t believe it until you see it!  95% of the jack fruit grown in Mexico is exported to the US, where it can be found in almost any Asian market across the country.

  I know, I know…let the jokes of “It looks like you swallowed a jack fruit” begin!
 Mangoes on the other hand are largely consumed in Mexico.  Only 35% of the mango production heads off to the export market. In the photo below is a 20 year orchard of mango trees.  To harvest the fruit, which grows throughout the very tall canopy, no ladders are used.  Just really good tree climbers, long poles for reach, and harnesses to keep from falling!

I did say there was a lot of sun involved and while it was a bit hot and humid for someone 7 1/2 months pregnant, it was still a great time to getaway!  We did go fishing one day and had a small amount of luck, the break from the humidity on land though was worth every second!

  We also were able to enjoy many sunsets on the beach, I had my share of mocktails, and some really really good food!

 I can’t thank our field man Barry Duerk from Bayer enough for inviting us to come and enjoy this experience of learning more about agriculture around the world, but also what they are looking at from their perspective.  I don’t think that there are easy conversations when it comes to how to best serve all parties involved in the agriculture industry.  It’s a complex system filled with farmers, pests, consumers, marketers and above all the ongoing challenge of getting enough food to feed the world.  I don’t think you can ignore the pure politics or complicated nature that gets injected into every piece of that puzzle.  But what I think we can do is keep having these conversations and keep working to find that balance that will probably never be fully achieved, but can always be improved and worked towards.  From what I saw on our trip south of the border, Bayer is going to be a player in these conversations for a long time to come!

Wine & Grass Seed Tour 2015

Last week I posted this photo from Shelly Boshart Davis…

IMG_4624-0I mentioned that it might seem strange in an agricultural area such as the pacific Northwest, an area known for growing over 280 different crops, that there may be some contention when it comes to farming as neighbors.  But in the past year or couple of years it has become apparent that there are risks when farming next to wine grapes and grass seed.  The problem comes during the spring.  Grass seed farmers, who need to keep their fields free from weeds in order to produce a high quality product, have to spray broad leaf herbicides around the end of March to beginning of April, depending on the weather each year.  These herbicides have traditionally been in a formulation that when put in the wrong conditions can “move” or “volatilize” and grow legs so to speak.  The herbicide then can move off the target site of a grass seed field, and drop onto another crop.  The biggest scare is when it decides to move to a vineyard that is nearby and if that vineyard is at the growing stage of bud break.  This is when the buds or fruit for the coming year start to come out of the vines.  This can cause a lot of damage to that vine for that year and in some extreme cases damage can last into the following season.

Obviously there is a reason to be concerned here.  Wine in Oregon has grown as an industry in our area in the past decade or so.  Oregon has been put on the map for their Pinot Noirs and I don’t see an end to the expansion into this market.  Grass seed growers have been around for generations here in Oregon building livelihoods on the mild climate and touting the name Grass Seed Capital of the World.  Actually 2/3 of the world’s grass seed comes from Oregon!! In the end, both industries have value here in Oregon agriculture.

So when winegrowers last year went to the legislature to try to take away those herbicide tools from grass seed growers, it woke a lot of us up to the fact that this is an issue that needs to be dealt with farmer to farmer, not through legislation. The tour that was sponsored by Oregon Seed Council and Oregon Winegrowers Association was the first step in doing just that.  There was a lot of talk about getting to know your neighbors.  Stories about vineyard owners bringing over a bottle of wine to talk about timing and crop rotation were told.  Success stories of farmers working side by side successfully for years were shared.  The ground work of moving forward with more education was set.

It’s easy to get defensive when practices within an industry collide.  I know that when we get farmer versus farmer in any forum it’s hard to swallow because both have their reasons for why their side is right or should get priority.  Who was there longer, who has a higher value, who is from this state and who isn’t.  These issues come to the surface so fast and with so much emotion it’s hard to sort through.  But when you look at the bottom line, that neither of us wants the other gone, we just want more communication and education about what is happening just over the fence row; that’s where you can start to work together to find solutions.

Here are a few things that I know:

  • On our farm we usually spray our herbicides (that could be harmful to grapes) at the end of March.  In most cases this is before bud break (usually at the beginning of April) for vineyards and a very safe time of year to put on our herbicides.
  • We are aware of drift issues and continually take classes and go to seminars that talk about how to reduce drift.
  • We are licensed applicators who want our pesticides to work in the most effective manner, to accomplish that we are always checking conditions such as the weather to make sure that our chemicals stays where we put it to get the job done.
  • Calling our neighbors for any sort of issue or question is not just a sometimes thing.  If there is anything we need to talk about or inform them of, they are just a phone call away.
  • Education even to homeowners in an area about the use of crossbow and other sensitive herbicides, which can be very harmful to grapes as well, is really important.  For example making sure they understand that October is the best time to spray blackberry briars to actually kill them, not in the spring or summer.

I walked away from the tour encouraged by what I heard from both sides of the conversation.  I hope that this tour continues and grows to include a more and more diverse set of attendees.  We are all here in Oregon because of the good soil to grow everything from Christmas trees to vegetables, grapes to grass seed and everything in between.  To keep tools in the toolbox to satisfy all our diverse practices here, there has to be an effort to work together in an ever changing landscape of crop rotations, markets and weather.